I thought that would be the last I’d see of Amy Ovalle. She had a story to write and needed my input to do so, but I’d flat-out refused her. I expected her to slink back to wherever she’d come from, preferably after telling whatever editor or source who had told her to talk to me that I wasn’t about to play ball.
I was wrong.
For whatever reason, Amy stuck around. She stuck around, and I kept running into her, like she was a wad of gum stuck on the bottom of my boot, sticking with every step.
The first encounter after our disastrous meeting at the diner happened at the gas station, but by the time I realized it was her, filling up her car, she’d already seen me, and it was too late to wheel my bike around and beg for a bit of fuel from Chuck before running to the next town over to fill up.
“Nice bike,” she said conversationally, pushing buttons on the pump as I flipped down the kickstand.
I stood and wiped an imaginary speck of dust from the leather seat. “Thanks. You know much about bikes, or just a fan?”
“I know enough to not say ‘nice motorcycle,’” she said, smiling. She had a really nice smile. I had to give her that. And the fact that she was kind of my public enemy number one right now didn’t change the fact that she was gorgeous. And friendly, if potentially manipulative.
“Never owned one, then, I guess?”
“Oh, no. I mean, I like to think of myself as kind of a badass, but that might be too much of a stretch for even me.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “I’ve seen little old ladies on the back of hogs. They looked good there.”
“Are you calling me old?”
“Of course not. I’m just saying not to sell yourself short. Everyone looks good on a bike.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself.”
Jesus. I was not blushing. I absolutely was not doing that. “Thanks.”
“You know, I’ve noticed a lot of people ride motorcycles around here,” Amy said. “Well, not a lot. But a lot when you take it proportional to the population of this place. Most of the time, they’re all parked outside of the bar.”
“Yeah, those are my buddies,” I said.
“Rough crowd?” Her eyes twinkled in the way that I now knew meant she was teasing me.
“The absolute worst,” I confirmed, playing along. “They’re in a gang and everything.”
That took Amy by surprise. “Really?”
“No, not really. Well, someone who might not know any better could think so. But it’s just a motorcycle club. I’m in it, too.”
“That’s why it’s called Horizon MC Bar,” she said, seeming to make some kind of connection. “So, is that the front?”
“The front of what?”
“The bar’s how you launder all of your ill-gained money, right?”
“Um, Amy? We’re a legitimate service organization. All the members are either former police or former military. We hold fundraisers for different causes throughout the year. The public park by your motel looks so nice because of us.”
“Sloan?”
“Yes?”
“You have to recognize when I’m just trying to get a rise out of you,” she said, patting me on my arm. “That was just pathetic.”
I sighed. “You’re right. It was pathetic. But I’m having a hard time knowing when to take you seriously and when to call bullshit. Aren’t you supposed to foster trust with your sources, as a writer?”
Amy winced. “You’re right. I have to work on that. I tease and joke around a lot to ease tension, but I shouldn’t rely on that.”
“I didn’t mean to tell you off. I’m just letting you know.”
“No, no, I know. You’re right, though. It’s not a good approach.”
She finished her transaction at the pump and screwed her gas cap back on. I felt bad. I hadn’t meant to fuss at her, or make her feel bad about what she was or wasn’t doing on her journey to becoming a writer.
I cleared my throat. It felt like I was about to make a mistake, but I plunged forward, heedless of all the various warning klaxons sounding in my brain.
“You ever ridden on a motorcycle?” I asked. “And don’t even start with scooters or mopeds. Those don’t count.”
“Never,” she said. “Not even scooters or mopeds. None of the above. I barely even know how to ride a bicycle. Wasn’t really a priority for me as a kid.”
Now the warning lights were flashing in my head, doing their best to blind me to what I was looking to do. “Want to go for a ride?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. If you want to.” My heart fluttered a little with anxiety, and I realized it was because I actually wanted her to say yes.
“Do you want to follow me to the motel so I can park the car?” she asked.
“It would be okay here, if you wanted to leave it.”
“Here at the pump?” She looked a little dubious at that proposal. “I could at least move it into a parking spot.”
I swept my arm around at all the empty pumps. “I really doubt that there’s going to be a run on gasoline while we’re gone. I won’t keep you for very long.”
“Well, you know your town,” she said. “But if I get a ticket for leaving this car where it’s not supposed to be…”
“I’ll just get Katie to take care of it,” I said.
“Katie?”
“Friend of the club. The bartender’s girlfriend. Happens to work for the county police.”
“Nice. I guess it’s handy to be an active member of a small community sometimes. Pays to know everyone, I mean.”
“It is pretty convenient.” I handed her my helmet. “Climb aboard.”
“God, I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” she said, giggling breathlessly. Her excitement made me grin, forget about who she was and why she was in Rio Seco.
“Just stay calm and hang on,” I said as she fastened my helmet beneath her chin.
“Don’t you need a helmet?” she asked, suddenly worried. “Oh my God, if we crashed and you cracked your head open on the ground like an egg because I was wearing your helmet”
“We’re not going to crash,” I assured her. “I’m good at this. Just trust me, and try and enjoy yourself.”
Amy started to say something else, but I revved the engine and she clamped onto me, her fingers digging into my shoulders. I took it slow down the main street, giving a couple of extra revs outside the bar, then really opened it up outside city limits. At first, I thought Amy was screaming at the speed we were going. But when I chanced a glance over my shoulder at her, I realized she was laughing in sheer pleasure, her dark hair whipping behind her, eyes alight with excitement.
“Keep your eyes on the road!” she shouted at me, and I whipped my head back around to comply. We weren’t in any danger, but it showed just how new this experience was to her. I was stunned to realize just how happy I was to share this with her. Riding always made me happy, sweeping away whatever worried me. Sharing that happiness was even better.
I took Amy along one of my favorite routes, an old, seldom-used road that retreated into the desert, approaching the mountains. When we did club rides, we almost always voted to go on this one. It was beautiful no matter what the season was, or the time of day. That was one thing that a lot of people didn’t realize about the nature of New Mexico. Depending on what time it was, the weather, and the season, the natural scenery could be completely different. One mountain was different whether it was dawn or dusk or the middle of the day. The colors changed, or different angles of the sun brought out distinct outcroppings and details that you might not have otherwise seen. This road was one of the best places to see that, though I turned around much sooner than I would’ve wanted to, cognizant of Amy behind me, of what she might think of me taking her deep into the middle of nowhere.
I popped a brief wheelie on a smooth patch of road just to hear her shriek, to feel her clutch at me harder.
“You’re an asshole, Sloan!” she yelled at me, but she was laughing all the same, exulting in the vibration of the wheels against the pavement, the wind whipping at our clothes. This was really nice. I had never really taken anyone for a ride on my motorcycle before. Just hadn’t found someone I’d wanted to share this with. Amy was the last person I would’ve thought I’d like to ride with, but here we were, having an amazing time, and I almost wished we didn’t have to end it so soon.
“What did you think?” I asked, walking the bike in to the pumps at the gas station. As I’d promised, Amy’s car was still parked there, unscathed and unmolested. There wasn’t even anyone else using any of the other pumps.
“I think I’m a motorcycle fan, now,” she said, swinging her leg over and stepping away from the bike. “Oh, my God. My knees are seriously weak right now.”
I laughed. “Be careful. I’d never hear the end of it if I let you fall down and hurt yourself after I took you riding.”
“It was just so amazing,” she gushed, handing me back my helmet. “I’ve never felt anything like that before. Maybe being on a rollercoaster comes close. But I felt so free. Like it was just us and the wind and the road. This place is so beautiful. I hadn’t really explored outside of town before.”
“It really grows on you,” I said. “The desert is really something.”
“The desert and the mountains,” she agreed. “Being on a motorcycle is the best way to see them, in my opinion.”
“Your car will feel like a prison now that you’ve tasted the kind of freedom a motorcycle can give you,” I promised her. “You’re going to start feeling really restless, now.”
“Screw it,” she said, laughing. “If I really wanted to, I could take that car right back to Albuquerque and exchange it for a motorcycle. Right? They rent motorcycles, don’t they?”
“I think so, but you’d probably have to take a class on it,” I said. “This isn’t your car?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “This is just a rental.”
“You don’t live in Albuquerque?”
“No. Just flew in.”
“Flew in from where?”
“You’re asking a lot of questions, aren’t you?” she teased me. “Isn’t that supposed to be my job?”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You’re fine. I pried first. You can pry, too, if you want.”
“That’s all right. I respect your privacy.”
“It’s okay to be curious. I flew in from Los Angeles.”
“Really?” I wouldn’t have guessed that. She didn’t seem like she belonged in LA. Of course, I didn’t have any better idea for where she belonged. It certainly wasn’t Rio Seco.
“Yeah, really,” she said. “That’s where I live.”
“How long are you going to be staying here in town?”
Amy just shrugged at that. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have anything to get back to Los Angeles for? Like a job?”
“When this opportunity came up, I quit my job,” she said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I subleased my apartment so I could afford to stay in Rio Seco for as long as I needed to.”
“But who’s footing your motel bill here?”
“I had a little money saved away,” she said. “If the story’s successful, the editor said there might be the opportunity to get some kind of retrograded reimbursement for whatever expenses I incur here.”
I felt the guiltiest in that moment that I ever had since Amy crashed into my life. She had given up her life in Los Angelesher life and her livelihood for this opportunity, and I wasn’t even really planning on telling her what she needed to know. It wasn’t out of meanness on my part; it was out of necessity. If I didn’t need to talk about it, I didn’t. Situations where I imagined I would need to talk about it included someone demanding that I tell them every last detail on pain of death, a loaded pistol pressed against my temple.
The situation with Amy was a lot different, but I still felt terrible.
“What happens if you don’t get your story?” I asked, hesitant to find out.
“I’ll go back to Los Angeles, surf some couches while I find another job probably in food service, because I have the experience and positions there are not hard to get then evict my tenant and move back into my apartment for as long as I can afford the rent.”
“It sounds like you have a plan,” I said cautiously.
“I mean, I do, but I don’t want to fail,” she said. “I had a good job before, in LA, even if it wasn’t the job I wanted. I don’t want to go back into food service. I want to be a writer. I want to succeed.”
“I hope you do succeed, then, if that’s what you want.” It was hard to wish her ill. She seemed so determined. It had to take a lot of guts to quit a sure thing in pursuit of the thing she truly wanted. Most people didn’t have the courage to do that, I’d bet.
“Does that mean that you’re actually considering talking to me now?” Amy asked, fidgeting a little with her car keys.
“What?” She’d taken me surprise by that one, but maybe that was what she’d wanted a sudden, awkward acquiescence to which she could hold me.
She shrugged, her expression neutral no, innocent. “I just thought if you were willing to give me a ride on your motorcycle, you might be willing to chat a little bit more. We’ve been having a good talk so far, haven’t we? You know me a little better, now.”
“If this is about me telling you my story about Iraq…”
“Yes. It is.” She smiled at me. “Just so we’re clear.”
“No,” I said, watching as her face fell a little bit. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m just not ready to talk about that.”
“Do you think you’ll ever be ready?”
I shook my head, looking into the distance. Things had been so simple on the open road, Amy laughing like a maniac in my ear. It had been so simple, so joyful. Now, everything was ugly and complicated again.
“Sloan?”
“I mean, there’s no real way of knowing,” I said. “Right now, though, the answer’s no. I don’t want to talk about it. Whether that’ll change in a week or a month or a year, I have no idea.”
“Okay.” Amy nodded. “I’ll take that.”
I had to stop her as she turned away, toward her car. “I don’t want to disappoint you, or lead you on. Or give you hope that I’ll eventually come around. I just want to be clear about that.”
“I get it, Sloan.” Her eyes twinkled. “But would you blame me if I hope you’ll come around?”
“No. I guess I wouldn’t.”
“All right, then. See you around.”
Rio Seco was a small town, sure, but after that ride, it really started to get ridiculous. Either Amy was following me or fate was having a laugh. I began to run into her at nearly every turn. I passed by her walking down the side of the road one morning on the way to Chuck and Haley’s new house, then circled back around.
“Are you okay?” I shouted at her, over the roaring of my bike’s engine.
“I’m on a jog,” she explained, sweat beading on her forehead. It was already hot, even though it was early. “Do people here not do things like this? You are the fourth person who has pulled over to ask me what I was doing.”
“I’m guessing people are trying to see if your car broke down and you needed any help,” I said. “The desert can be dangerous on foot.”
“I have water. I’m well hydrated. I’m not pushing myself. It’s interval training you caught me on the walking portion of the workout.”
“If you say so,” I said, and she huffed, obviously offended.
“Well, unless there’s a gym hidden somewhere in this place…”
“Nope. No gym. Not in Rio Seco.”
“Then the good citizens here are just going to have to get used to seeing me get my exercise like this.”
She walked purposefully forward, and I shadowed her.
“Are you sure you don’t want a ride back to your motel?” I asked. “Or I’ll take you to the job site I’m heading to. It’s for Chuck and Haley. Haley’s”
“Oh, I met Haley at the bar. She works there, right?”
“That’s right. And Chuck’s in the club, runs the mechanic shop.”
“Well, that’s nice and all, but I’m trying to exercise here, Sloan. As tempting as it is, I don’t need a ride anywhere. That’s what my feet are for.”
“Okay.” I didn’t like this. Some motorist who wasn’t paying a lick of attention could easily clip her and seriously hurt or kill her. And if she was from Los Angeles, she probably didn’t know how to handle herself in the dry, relentless desert heat that was typical of summer here around Rio Seco. She did hold a bottle of water in her right hand, but I doubted there was enough in it to keep her going.
“Was there something else you needed?” she asked me, her voice dry but sharp. “You ready to talk about Iraq yet?”
“Not today, I’m afraid.” I hesitated, keeping pace with her on the road. “Do you at least have your cell phone with you?”
She tapped a band around her arm that I hadn’t noticed before. “It’s counting my steps.”
“Would you please call me if you run into any trouble?” I asked her. “If you get too hot? It’s not worth pushing yourself if you end up getting heatstroke and that shit isn’t anything to mess around with.”
“Fine,” she said. “You’re worse than my parents. I know my limits. It’s not like I’ve never worked out before.”
“In the desert? In the summer?”
“I’m not stupid, Sloan, even if you insist on patronizing me like I might be.”
“All right, then. Have a good workout.”
I zoomed off faster than I needed to, kicking up a little more dust than I intended, doing all I could to resist the urge to look over my shoulder and check that she was okay. Why was I even worried about her? She’d made it clear that she was doing just fine on her own. I just didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. It would be my fault, if something did. She was only hanging around here because she was hoping I might change my mind, might share my experiences with her. If I would’ve caved in and spilled all my secrets, she could’ve already been on her way back to Los Angeles, or on to bigger and better things.
If anything happened to her, it was on me.
It wasn’t until the sun was well on its way to the horizon when I had an even more insidious thoughtmaybe I was resisting telling Amy details about Iraq because I secretly wanted her to stick around in Rio Seco for as long as possible. Whenever I ran into her in public unexpectedly, my heart raced. Maybe it wasn’t panic. Maybe it was excitement. That motorcycle ride with her was something of a lingering memory, popping up in the strangest of places while I was trying to go to sleep at night, or taking a shower, the phantom feel of her torso pressed up against my back doing interesting and wonderful things to me.
It got to the point that I didn’t trust myself around her, that I would walk in the opposite direction or make a quick detour if I saw her or thought I was going to see her. If anyone had been casually observing me during those tense days, I’m sure I looked hilarious, darting in and out of alleyways, backtracking on my bike, staying overlong in one place just to rush through the next, certain she would walk in the door at any second.
It felt like I was losing my mind over this.
I made a trip late one evening to the lone grocery store in town just before closing time. If Amy didn’t have anything to do during the day, I figured she’d make her supply runs then. Only fools like me or people with last-minute emergencies went to the store at this hour.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
Fools like me and Amy, apparently, as she tapped me on the shoulder as we stood in the checkout line, our carts and their contents on display for all the world to see. It was a stupid thing, but I blushed a little at the toilet paper package taking up most of the room in my own cart. If I bought it in bulk like that, I justified, it would save me the shame of having to buy it more often.
“Hey, there,” I said. “Store’s about to close.”
“I know. Kind of makes me miss the twenty-four-hour places in LA. I could get my fix whenever I needed it that way. My fix and my groceries.”
“Yeah…things tend to kind of shut down around here at night. Everywhere except the bar.”
“You’re right.” She watched me as I rocked back and forth, fidgeting in my discomfort at being around her like this. The line was moving slowly. There were apparently a lot of fools out tonight, trying to slip in some last-minute shopping before they locked us out.
“So what’ve you been up to?” I asked, uncomfortable enough to try and make small talk with someone I wasn’t even sure I wanted to talk to at all.
“Just doing my interval training,” she said. “Let you in on a secret?”
“Okay.”
“It’s not really interval training. I just call it that to make me feel better about myself. I just jog until I get tired, then I walk.”
“Hey, no judgment, here,” I said, putting my hands up. “It’s a lot more than most people do.”
“You look like you keep in shape.”
“I’ve been known to jog from time to time,” I said. “Never in the summer, though.”
“What, you just let yourself go in the summer?” She gave me a dubious once-over, and I had the strange sensation of being undressed with her eyes. “I find that very hard to believe.”
“I just try to do some pushups and sit-ups every day,” I said. “Honestly, I think it’s the job. I’m always squatting and bending and reaching. It’s basically yoga. Or calisthenics. Something. I don’t know.”
“Uh-huh.” She cocked her head. “Maybe it’s all that running around you’ve been doing to avoid me.”
I coughed. “I, uh, what? I’m not avoiding you.”
“Sloan, please. You don’t have to lie about it. It’s fine. The last time we interacted, I kind of pushed you hard about your story, and I’m not going to do that anymore. That’s not the way forward.”
“It’s…it’s not?”
“No.” She smiled. “I found this website where I can do a little freelance stuff nothing very hardcore or particularly rewarding, but it’s writing. Reviews and blog posts and some copywriting. Stuff like that.”
“That’s…good.”
“It is what it is,” she said, shrugging. “Maybe I should change my card, now. Put ‘writer’ on it.”
“Whatever floats your boat.” She was writing. She was doing what she wanted to be doing. Why did I feel so melancholy about it? “Do you feel like you sold out?”
Amy narrowed her eyes at me. “Pardon?”
“I didn’t mean anything bad by that,” I said, beating a hasty retreat. “I’m glad for you. Is that work helping you with the motel room?”
“It’s why I took it on,” she confirmed, nodding. “It’s not bad. It’s not what I wanted, but it’s not bad. Just a tiny shuffle forward. Not the giant leap I was hoping for.”
She was sweet about it, at least, and didn’t press me about the story or the fact that it was my reluctance to open up to her that was deferring her hopes and dreams.
“So how is your work going?" she asked me innocently as we crept forward in that same damn line at the grocery store. It was the only line open, and at this pace, I was pretty sure all my perishables were going to perish before I could get them home. I’d brought my little trailer hitch to the motorcycle just for this purpose.
“Fine,” I said. “Straightforward, at least. No surprises.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
The elderly shopper in front of me was moving glacially slow, seeming to pause to consider each item he’d picked out before placing it on the conveyor belt. At this rate, I’d be here all night. With Amy. Awkwardly making terrible conversation.
“Sir, do you need some help?” I asked loudly, taking care to enunciate each syllable. “Can I put some of this up here for you?”
“Don’t touch my shit!” he exploded suddenly as I reached forward. “I’ll kick your ass! See if I don’t!”
I put my hands up. “I was just trying to help you out, sir. I’m sorry to bother you.”
“Leave me alone,” he said hotly. Then, as quickly as he’d lost his mind at me, he resumed his slow progress unloading his very full grocery cart.
I heaved a sigh and turned back around to see that Amy was trying her hardest not to burst out laughing.
“I don’t know why you think it’s funny,” I grumbled at her, chuckling alongside her all the same. “You’re going to be stuck here, too.”
“I’m not the one in a hurry,” she pointed out. “That seems to be you, and probably just to get away from me.”
“I’m not trying to get away from you,” I lied. “I just have places to be.”
“Places that aren’t standing in line with your nemesis,” she joked.
“Believe me. You are not my nemesis.”
I glanced down at her shopping cart and frowned. There were just a few of items in it, and all of them were granola bars. The only motel in town wasn’t nice enough to have any sort of continental breakfast, but the diner was good at any hour of the day. She obviously had a car, too, so she could jet over to the next town to get a fast food fix. The nearest nice sit-down restaurant was roughly forty-fiveminutes away, though we’d been hearing rumors that someone was applying for the permits to revamp one of the historic main street buildings in downtown Rio Seco and make it into a restaurant. The point was, Amy shouldn’t have been going hungry. She had options. I just hated the idea that she might be holed up in her motel room, watching TV, eating granola bars, and waiting for me to give her what she’d come here to get my memories from Iraq.
Then again, it wasn’t like I was going to be giving them up anytime soon. And she probably didn’t even have access to a microwave, let alone an oven. If she didn’t want to keep on doing what she was doing, she was free to give up and go back to Los Angeles, start over again, find some other path to the dream job she was pursuing. I didn’t have to be her one ticket out of mediocrity. That was a lot of pressure to put on me.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Amy said gently, and I realized I was just standing there, waiting for her, as if we’d traveled here together and just spent the last few minutes as companions, shopping for the bare necessities. I could’ve easily walked away after paying, once my groceries were scanned and bagged, and left her to whatever she was looking forward to doing to pass the evening. Instead, I’d just hung around like some desperate idiot not even sure what he was waiting on.
“Do you have any Fourth of July plans?” I blurted out.
“I think I heard that the town had something planned,” she said. “Like a fireworks-in-the-park kind of thing. I was thinking about going to that. Does your motorcycle club have anything to do with it?”
“No, we take a break for that one,” I said, noting the way she sagged forward a little bit in disappointment. Was it disappointment, though, or was I just imagining things I wanted to see? “We organize a lot of our major fundraisers and events around holidays, but Independence Day isn’t one of them.”
“Is there a reason why?” She followed me to my trailer in the parking lot, plastic bags filled with granola bars swinging from her fists.
“Not really,” I said. “Just a lot of us like to party pretty hard on the Fourth, so we try to keep that as in-house as possible. We have our reputations to maintain, and all of that.” I unloaded the groceries from my shopping cart and loaded them back into the trailer, making sure they were all secured by bungees.
“Ooh.” Amy brightened again. “Do you all have a secret headquarters?”
“You mean besides the bar?” I laughed. “No, we just rotate the party from house to house. It’s Brody’s turn this year. Would you like to go?”
“You’re inviting me to your club’s Fourth of July party?” she asked slowly, then broke into a coquettish grin. “Aw, is this a date?”
“Ooh, I hope I’m not going to regret asking you to go,” I said. “There’ll be good food and beer there, and a lot more entertainment than the inside of your hotel room.”
“Are you sure?” she countered. “I do have cable, you know.”
“I’ll text you the address, and you can decide if you want to show up,” I said. “You can see the fireworks display in town pretty nicely from Brody’s backyard. I’m kind of glad he’s hosting this year. Though next year it’ll probably be a pool party over at Chuck and Haley’s new place.”
“Nice, they’re getting a pool?”
“Hell, yeah,” I said, pumped that there was at least someone in this town who was as excited about it as me. “The summers aren’t going to suck as much anymore.”
“Don’t forget spring, fall, and winter.”
“I doubt they’ll keep the thing open all year,” I said. “Desert gets cold in the winter.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Sometimes we even get a bit of snow, if the conditions are right.”
“Huh. I had no idea.” She peered at the sky as if a stray flurry could tumble down at any minute. “Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to see that.”
“Amy?”
“Yeah?”
“Just how long, exactly, are you going to stay here in Rio Seco?”
Her face was resolute in the darkened parking lot. “As long as it takes.”
Under any other circumstances, from any other person, that would’ve sounded, if not cryptic, then definitely disturbing. But from Amy, it meant something different to me. It meant that she was sticking around, and I kind of liked that idea, spending the seasons with her in Rio Seco.
“Good,” I told her, and started the motorcycle, accelerating into the night, well aware that she watched me as I went.